Aye, I was a latecomer to it as well. It wasn't as readily available when I was younger and I didn't really "get it" until I saw a few episodes a few years ago. The first season is quite a slog though.

Worth noting that almost the entire show was written by the show's creator, Straczynski. He wrote 92/110 of the episode scripts himself. It's kind of crazy too since he used to be one of the main writers for He-Man and that entire franchise, along with a couple of the script editors he brought on-board for B5.

The show had some remarkably solid takes on a lot of topics, and Straczynski had the creative boldness to depict a multi-pronged totalitarian takeover of Earth's government as an integral part to the show's entire story arc. Which was not the kind of thing you'd normally see in sci-fi shows back then.